


the mechanics of writing a love song

by poppyseedheart



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Songwriting, Unrequited Love, attempted comfort, implied gyuhao, one repressed gay and one friend saying all the wrong things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29304774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppyseedheart/pseuds/poppyseedheart
Summary: “You wanted me to tell you it’s not worth it,” says Jihoon. “Why? You seem pretty determined to ask him out anyway. You just want me to sit here and yell at you at one in the morning?”Mingyu rubs at his eyes and mumbles, “I know you wouldn’t be yelling atme.”
Relationships: Kim Mingyu & Lee Jihoon | Woozi, Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi/Lee Jihoon | Woozi
Comments: 11
Kudos: 53





	the mechanics of writing a love song

**Author's Note:**

> This is a weird sad little fic about two people trying really hard and talking at cross-purposes and there is a lot about it that's close to my heart.
> 
> Unrequited tag is implied between Jihoon and Soonyoung, for clarity. Not betaed, mistakes are my own. <3

The knock at his studio door is unexpected mostly because it’s after one in the morning. The others are around sometimes, especially Soonyoung and Chan. He’d actually heard them earlier in the practice room when he’d taken a bathroom break. (He took the long way there, his brain unhelpfully reminds him, the more circuitous path that takes him nearer the closed door where he can almost always hear Soonyoung’s voice, sharper than it ever is, counting beats). 

He doesn’t get up, waiting for someone to yell through the door or start kicking it or—

His phone lights up with a text from Mingyu. 

_Hyung, it’s cold in the hallway ㅠㅠ please let me in~_

Jihoon sighs and massages the bridge of his nose. Another verse consultation, probably. Mingyu’s been struggling with this latest one and has taken to whining about it on Jihoon’s studio couch.

After another pause, just enough for a couple of deep breaths and a _Save Project_ , he drags himself out of the chair and heads for the door, stretching as he goes. There are four discrete pops—yikes—in his shoulder and neck, and he sighs as some of the tension releases.

When he opens the door, Mingyu looks disheveled, like he’d come here all in a rush. “Yes?” Jihoon asks.

“Can I come in?” asks Mingyu. “It’s important.”

Jihoon looks at him more carefully. His jacket is only half-on, and there’s a furrow at his brow that promises that whatever this is, Mingyu must find it pretty pressing. That doesn’t mean it is, but he generally knows not to bother Jihoon with petty stuff while he’s working. If he ended up here, it’s likely either music-related, or he needs someone who won’t take his shit to dispense advice. 

Sure, thinks Jihoon. Fine. He needed a break anyway.

He steps to the side silently, and Mingyu lets himself in.

“It started raining right as I got here,” Mingyu says. His jacket is soft fabric, would easily get soaked through. Jihoon resigns himself to sharing his umbrella on the way home.

“That’s nice,” Jihoon answers. He pretends to turn back to his song, reaching for his big headphones and letting Mingyu stop him with a loose grip around his wrist.

“Wait, wait, I did want to talk about something. You can take a break, right hyung?”

“No,” says Jihoon, but he puts the headphones down, uncurling them from his fist, and spins around in his chair until he’s facing Mingyu. “What’s wrong?”

Mingyu laughs nervously. “Why do you think something’s wrong?”

Jihoon levels him with a flat look, and Mingyu wilts under it.

“Fine,” Mingyu says. “I need your help. I’m trying to figure out how to ask Myungho on a date.”

Jihoon has approximately thirteen separate emotions in the span of two seconds, and he’s left mostly with surprise. “A date?” he manages to ask over the roaring in his ears.

Mingyu nods seriously. “It has to be special. Like, meaningful. But we don’t get a lot of time in private, and I don’t think he’d want me to do anything in front of other people, even if it’s just the members.”

Jihoon considers this, tapping his cold fingers against the desk, heart still racing. “You’re right about that,” he says. He can’t imagine a version of Minghao that would be anything less than mortified if Mingyu started serenading him with an audience. But to jump straight to logistics would be to skip right over— “Hold on, why are you asking him on a date in the first place?”

“Uh,” says Mingyu. He shrugs helplessly. “Because I want to date him? Because I like him? I don’t know, the normal reasons.”

“We’re not normal,” says Jihoon. “This isn’t a normal situation, you can’t just—”

Mingyu huffs, starting to look annoyed. “Well I know that, hyung. But I like him, and I think he likes me, and I want to take him for dinner. Is that bad?”

He asks it like he wants Jihoon to tell him it’s bad. Like he wants to be yelled at.

“Why did you come to me for this,” says Jihoon, in what he can hear even himself is a hollow voice.

Mingyu winces. “You give good advice,” he tries.

“Mingyu-yah.”

“I mean it! You say things that you mean. I wanted to hear the truth.”

“You wanted me to tell you it’s not worth it,” says Jihoon. “Why? You seem pretty determined to do it anyway. You just want me to sit here and yell at you at one in the morning?”

Mingyu rubs at his eyes and mumbles, “I know you wouldn’t be yelling at _me_.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” says Mingyu. He shifts uncomfortably on the couch, peeling off his jacket and folding it to set next to him. “Sorry, hyung.”

Jihoon doesn’t even understand what Mingyu is apologizing for. “I can’t help you with date planning. You know I don’t… do that,” he finishes uncomfortably. It’s almost funny, a joke with the members that turned into a joke with the company that turned into a joke with the fans. With the world. Jihoon doesn’t date, but he sure can write a fucking love song, huh?

“I don’t know, you’re kind of quiet and he’s quiet too. You don’t like a big fuss.”

“You could’ve asked Wonwoo then. Shua-hyung, even. They both love this stuff.”

“Yeah, but—”

A loud knock interrupts Mingyu, and Soonyoung’s voice floats irritatingly through the door. “Jihoon-ah,” it croons off-pitch, “you promised you wouldn’t work too hard tonight! Finish up soon!”

“Yeah,” Jihoon yells back vaguely, feeling his mood sink further. He’d forgotten that he promised to be out by two, and this song isn’t nearly as finished as it should be.

Mingyu perks up, checking his phone for the time and then twisting to face the door. “I’ll make sure he leaves, hyung!”

“Mingyu?” comes Soonyoung’s loud, loud reply.

There’s a pause after that, and then the door is opening.

Mingyu’s jaw drops. “He knows your new code?”

Jihoon had changed it after the last bout of fast food wrappers and general trash. The members had apologized, Chan first and Seungcheol last but most earnestly, but knowing that they’d pushed Jihoon just a little too far didn’t undo the fact that it had happened. And if Soonyoung had asked—well, wheedled at—Jihoon for the new passcode with a promise that they could keep an eye on each other, and if Jihoon had taken that to mean that they’d be spending more time together rather than that he’d be hustled out of his studio when Soonyoung deemed it too late— if Jihoon had stupidly thought that he could have something for himself even when—

Well, whatever. 

Soonyoung grins and shoots finger guns first at Mingyu, then at Jihoon for good measure. “I’m polite,” he flagrantly lies. “Jihoonie loves having me here,” he continues, which Jihoon wishes was a lie. 

“Wow,” Mingyu says, a little too knowingly.

“I’m leaving soon,” Jihoon promises Soonyoung. Takes a second to look at him: his messy, sweaty hair, the uneven flush splotched across his cheeks, the ratty practice shorts. “Seriously,” he says, voice lowering the way he can never help when it’s late at night and it’s the two of them here, “go home, sleep. We’re fine.”

Soonyoung acquiesces, departing with a pat on the shoulder to each of them. Jihoon feels himself lean into the gentle squeeze, into Soonyoung’s hands, and it’s humiliating but he’s too tired to help it.

As soon as the door closes behind Soonyoung, Mingyu turns on him. “Your ears are red.”

Jihoon spins around in his chair until he’s facing his computer again, back to Mingyu. Back to the door. “It’s cold in here.”

“Not really,” says Mingyu. “And you gave hyung your passcode?”

“Leave it,” Jihoon replies. “Seriously, I need to finish this song, so if you don’t need anything else right now…”

“Can I help?” asks Mingyu. His gaze is weirdly serious, and Jihoon doesn’t think he’d actually leave if Jihoon asked him to straight out.

Jihoon shrugs, grabbing the notebook on top of the pile next to him and throwing it at Mingyu without looking. “I’m rewriting the last verse. Should be toward the back of the book, last page with writing on it. I can play the instrumental if you want, I think you guys heard it at the meeting on Tuesday.”

Mingyu hums an affirmative, and then starts flipping pages. 

Jihoon puts on his headphones and goes back to his work. Aside from the last verse, the hook into the bridge has been fighting him, and he keeps fiddling with it, raising it by a tone and then lowering it and then raising it again. Maybe if it’s a quarter of a beat slower. Maybe if he adds a fucking trumpet or something.

He realizes too late that Mingyu not bothering him means that something might be wrong. 

“Hyung,” comes Mingyu’s voice, loud to be heard past the noise-dampening of the headphones. 

Jihoon looks at him. Mingyu looks guilty. The notebook in his hands is white.

The notebook in his hands is—

“You’re not supposed to have that,” Jihoon hears himself say. His yellow lyric book is still sitting cheerfully on the desk next to him. 

Mingyu swallows hard. “Hyung, I think we should talk about this.”

“No.”

“Seriously. You don’t— hyung, you don’t see how _sad_ you look. I’m just worried about you.”

Jihoon fights the urge to tug at his own collar or bite the shit out of his lower lip. He wants to yell. He wants to run. “You don’t need to worry.”

“But if it’s hurting you… Soonyoung-hyung wouldn’t want you to be hurting. He doesn’t know, does he? And you’re just dealing with it by yourself.”

“It doesn’t matter,” says Jihoon, and the sick part of it is how easy it is to believe himself when he says it. Like he’s outside of his own body. It _doesn’t_ matter. If it mattered—

“How long?” Mingyu asks.

Years, Jihoon doesn’t say. 

There are a lot of true answers. Soonyoung has always been bright, but he’s grown into himself well since he first showed up as an over-loud trainee. Jihoon had hated him at first—that much is common knowledge within the group, though, to be fair, Jihoon had been slow to warm up to all of them at one point or another. The part Jihoon doesn’t say out loud is what came after the hatred. 

He reaches out a hand, silently begging Mingyu to give it back.

Mingyu just keeps looking at him. “You should tell him.”

“ _Mingyu_ ,” snaps Jihoon.

But Mingyu doesn’t back down, brows still drawn, hands still tight around the notebook. And all at once, Jihoon realizes that Mingyu didn’t come to ask for dating advice at all.

“I’m not talking about this.”

“Hyung,” tries Mingyu.

Jihoon is already standing up and throwing his umbrella at Mingyu. “Nope. Great try, seriously, this was a fun talk. Good luck with Myungho.”

“He wouldn’t want you to feel like this,” Mingyu tries again. All big, stupid, hopeful heart.

Jihoon knows better. “Are you going to tell him?” he asks coldly, to mask the part of him that’s shaking.

“No,” says Mingyu. When Jihoon tries to walk past him, he makes a weak attempt at blocking his path, but he caves when Jihoon just raises an eyebrow at him. He doesn’t know what his face looks like, but he’s tired. He’s so fucking tired.

They end up walking through the empty building silently, side by side, notebook abandoned on the couch in the studio. Mingyu keeps clenching and unclenching his fists.

It’s pelting rain outside. Jihoon orders Mingyu a taxi.

“Aren’t you coming?” Mingyu asks, when it arrives and Jihoon makes no move to walk out with him. The glass door is propped open between them, Mingyu half-outside under the overhang and pouting at him. Jihoon’s umbrella is looped around his wrist.

Jihoon shakes his head. “Go home,” he says, shivering. The wind is frigid. He feels sick.

“Are you sure? Soonyoung-hyung said—”

“Yeah,” says Jihoon, because if he hears Soonyoung’s name one more time tonight he’s going to— he’ll— 

_Years_ , and he still feels like he’s going to shake out of his own skin if he thinks about it too hard. The things Mingyu read in that notebook, the things Jihoon has given away tonight, it’s all stuff in the box Jihoon has tried so fucking hard to keep a lid on, and the thought of it pouring out now makes him feel like a rotten piece of fruit, awful to the very core, skin about to split. Any day now, he thinks, and feels a hysterical laugh try to bubble out of his throat. It’s past two in the morning now, surely. Soonyoung will be waiting up, or at least blowing up his phone before going to sleep. And Jihoon will answer him as he always does, soaking up the love like it means the same thing to Soonyoung as it always has to him.

“Yeah,” he says again, uselessly, to Mingyu, gesturing back toward his studio with a vague hand. “Go. I’ll be fine. I just have to finish this song.”

**Author's Note:**

> twit & cc @poppyseedfic!


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